Embrace the Feeling of Information Overload!

I was reading a number of stress-ridden articles this week about living in the Internet age. How can we cope with the "tide of information flooding over us" and being "burdened by information overload"? I know quite a number of people, myself included, who read hundreds of emails, blogs, twitter posts and RSS feeds each week and don't feel in the least bit burdened by them. Why is this? Here are my seven steps to loving the information age.

1.) Don't try to control. The Internet is huge. You're never going to read even a fraction of it. Within any niche there are millions of articles, videos and blogs to be found. You cannot possible see even a minute percentage. Accept this.

2.) But, take control. Don't run your email client all the time, immediately reacting to whatever is coming in. Switch it on two or three times a day and read all new mails. Categorise them. Ones that require action, put in one folder. Those that you might need to refer to, leave in the inbox. Those that are left, delete. I have tens of thousands of emails in my inbox stretching back over 5 years. It's easy to find an individual one, by either sorting by date or person or by using the search tools.

3.) Use an RSS reader. Instead of going out finding information, why not let the web come to you? Use an RSS reader like Google Reader, to sign up for your favourite sites' RSS feeds. Then once a week you can flick through all the latest information from all the sites on one page.

4.) Listen to Jerry Michalski. He says- "You have to be Zen-like. You have to let go of the need to know everything completely. I hardly read blog posts anymore unless someone tweets me about it or I get the link in my feed. Trust your community to filter and flow the right things to you when you need them."

5.) Cut down on sending internal mails. Why not go and speak face-to-face, it'll build a better relationship than doing it by wire. A new software tool called Postware requires employees to attach a non-cash "stamp" to each internal email, drawing from a fixed allocation of stamps each day.

6.) Be succinct. http://five.sentenc.es/ has a policy of keeping all mail less than five sentences, which is usually more than sufficient.

7.) If all else fails - declare email bankruptcy. Email your contacts telling them you're starting over again. Select all your mails and...press DELETE! It'll make you realise that you can quite easily function without the need of all those annoying mails clogging up your hard drive!